Slavery in America (c. 1619-1865)

This topic examines how chattel slavery in British North America and the United States was constructed by law, sustained by economy, and contested by the daily lives of enslaved people.

Why This Topic Matters on AP AAS

• Chattel slavery is the social structure against which Black politics, culture, and resistance defined themselves for over two centuries.
• It is foundational for causation prompts about race, citizenship, and the Civil War.
• The AP CED expects you to read enslaved people as historical actors, not only as victims.

1) Building a Racial Slave System

• Early Virginia (1619-1660s) blurred lines between indentured servitude and lifelong bondage.
• Colonial slave codes (Virginia 1662, 1705) made enslavement hereditary through the mother and stripped legal personhood.
• Bacon's Rebellion (1676) accelerated planter elites' shift toward racialized lifetime slavery.
• By 1750, slavery was a continent-wide institution with regional variations.

2) Regional Systems of Bondage

The Chesapeake (Virginia, Maryland)

• Tobacco-driven plantations; smaller average enslaved holdings.
• Higher rates of natural reproduction allowed an enslaved population that grew internally.

The Lowcountry (South Carolina, Georgia)

• Rice and indigo plantations with brutal mortality and high African import rates.
• Concentrated populations supported the persistence of African cultural forms (Gullah).

The Antebellum Cotton South

• After the cotton gin (1793) and Louisiana Purchase (1803), cotton plantations expanded across the Deep South.
• The internal slave trade tore enslaved families apart, moving roughly 1 million people from the Upper to the Lower South between 1790 and 1860.

3) The Lives Enslaved People Built

• Family formation persisted despite legal denial: enslaved people maintained kin networks, named children for relatives, and resisted forced separations.
• African-rooted religious practice blended with evangelical Protestantism, producing the spirituals tradition and independent Black congregations.
• Enslaved people developed economies of their own: provision grounds, hiring out, and limited cash savings.

4) Mechanisms of Control and Resistance

5) The Economic Centrality of Slavery

• By 1860, enslaved people were the largest single asset in the U.S. economy, valued above railroads and manufacturing combined.
• Northern textile mills, banks, and insurance firms profited from cotton produced by enslaved labor.
• This makes slavery a national, not regional, institution and is central to AP causation arguments about the Civil War.

6) High-Yield Terms

• Chattel slavery
• Slave codes (Virginia 1705)
• Internal slave trade
• Gullah / Lowcountry
• Spirituals
• Provision grounds

7) AP Writing Tips

1. Use the term "enslaved people" rather than "slaves" to center their humanity.
2. For causation prompts, connect the cotton boom (1793 onward) to the expansion and political defense of slavery.
3. When citing resistance, balance dramatic revolts with everyday acts of survival and family-building.

Quick Check

• How did legal definitions in colonial Virginia shape the racial character of slavery?
• Why did the cotton gin transform both the economy and the geography of slavery?
• What evidence shows that enslaved people built durable cultural and family lives despite the legal system?